"The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces," says the wise man in Proverbs xxx. 28. What a picture in a few simple words of the industry, courage and perseverance with which this little creature is gifted! and of the reward which would seem to be implied. Shall we seem to be straining the image if we allow our thoughts to be carried by this picture to the home of our heavenly King, where, as we are promised, our eyes shall see Him "in His beauty"? "To patient faith," says the hymn, "the prize is sure."
The spider, we might say, is essentially of an aspiring nature. She weaves her net high up in corners where the duster and broom of the busy housemaid will not easily reach her. She fasts long and is not drawn away from the spot where she expects to get the reward of her patience. Many of us can work hard and well by fits and starts, but we weary of sustained effort, and we are "found sleeping." Or like the pilgrims to the Celestial City we are tempted to stray and delight ourselves in flowery "Bypath meadows." Play, healthy recreation, we must have, but it must be such as helps us in the race of life and not such as weakens our purpose and hinders us from reaching the desired goal. I look back sometimes on the companions of my girlhood, and I must often acknowledge that certain boys and girls whom we were wont to reproach as being dull plodders, have beaten many of their fellows in the battle of life.
There is a species of spider which carries, attached to her body, a round, white, silky bag of eggs, just about as big as a pea. It is heavy, but nothing would induce the affectionate mother to part with it. The French naturalist, Bonnet, in order to test this love for her offspring, once threw such a mother spider into the hole of an ant-lion, in the sand where the great insect lay in hiding for its prey. The poor spider tried to run away but the ant-lion caught at the bag of eggs and tried to drag it under the sand. At last he succeeded in breaking the gluten by which her bag was attached to her. Instantly the spider seized this in her jaws and she struggled hard to bear it away. It was in vain however; her precious burden was dragged under. Then the poor mother might have escaped with her own life, but she preferred death to the loss of her offspring, and if the naturalist had not taken her out of the pit she would have been buried with them. She would not leave the spot however, although Bonnet tried to make her do so, by moving her with a little twig, over and over again. In reading this one cannot help wishing that she had not been so tortured. Some of our scientists, as I said before, have pushed their studies of moral qualities in the so-called brute world to a most unjustifiable extent, it would seem.
When the young of this affectionate mother are hatched, and they have got out of the bag where they were kept so safely, they attach themselves to her body. She carries them everywhere she goes and feeds them until they are able to fend for themselves.
Referring to persevering industry, we recall the pretty story of William Cobbett's courtship and marriage, as told by Dr. Smiles, from his "Life." Cobbett was a practical man, full of blunt common sense. When he first saw the girl who afterwards became his wife, she was only thirteen years of age, he being twenty-one, and at the time sergeant-major in a foot regiment stationed at St. John's in New Brunswick. Passing her father's door, on a cold winter's day, he saw the girl out in the snow, scrubbing a washing-tub. "That's the girl for me!" he cried, mentally, and he set about making her acquaintance. As soon as he could get discharged from the army, he determined that he would persuade her to become his wife. The girl returned to Woolwich with her father, who was also a sergeant-major, but in the artillery. The night before they left St. John's, her lover sent her a hundred and fifty guineas which he had saved, begging her to accept it, so that she might not be obliged to do any hard work until he also could return to England and marry her. She took the money, and it was five years before Cobbett obtained his discharge and was able to go to see the girl he loved. "I found," he said, "my little girl a servant of all work—and hard work it was—at five pounds a year, in the house of a Captain Brisac; and, without hardly saying a word about the matter, she put into my hands the whole of my hundred and fifty guineas unbroken." Soon afterwards they were married, and he delighted later in attributing to her "the comfort and much of the success of his after life." In his "Advice to young men" he drew from his wife his picture of a true and womanly helpmate, with "a vividness and brightness and, at the same time, a force of good sense that have never been surpassed by any English writer."
What Sarah Martin, who was left an orphan very young, and who as a woman went out dressmaking first at one shilling a day, was able to achieve in visiting and helping to reclaim poor prison women, and not only them but dissolute men and boys, loving, praying, and watching by them, you ought all to read fully. I think the story of her life was published by the Religious Tract Society. She gave six and seven hours to this work every day. For twenty years she did this without help or reward—her grandmother having left her ten or twelve pounds a year; the rest of her income coming from her hard work during part of each day as a dressmaker. At last the gaol committee told her that she must become their paid servant at twelve pounds a year or "be excluded from the prison." Although she shrank from this payment of her labours of love, she had to accept it, or give up her charge, and for two years she had that poor stipend until her health failed. She was in point of fact schoolmistress and chaplain and seamstress to the scum of Yarmouth. But what a reward was hers!
In my last paper I quoted Matthew Arnold's lines—
"Tasks in hours of insight willed
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled."
"Les beaux esprits se rencontrent," and it will perhaps interest some of you, as it has done myself, to hear that Professor Tyndall used to say of Professor Faraday that "in his warm moments he formed a resolution and in his cool ones he made that resolution good." We cannot all be active scientists or philanthropists, but let us end this little study by resolving that we will be less discouraged and hindered by difficulties in our own special work, or by the consideration of what we are apt to deem our unfitness for the appointed task, our own inadequacy, than we have hitherto been.
"With one hand work and with the other pray,
And God shall bless them both from day to day."